Making an old bike work is all about how you frame it. And at CESTA they really now how to re-frame it. If you look closely at the bike above (and know anything about bikes) you'll quickly see that this is a handmade 'hybrid'. The front looks more like a child's BMX style bike, while the back appears to be an adult mountain bike. Extensive racks we...

Make some noise for Michael Miehl! Mike has been managing our bike collection at Sherwood High School almost since the last Brood X cicada emergence. He's interested in the little buggers not just because he's a science teacher but, admit it, it's quite a show. But really, what's the buzz about bikes and Sherwood?  It's true, we've b...

For many of our beneficiary projects around the world, bikes serve as the vehicle that drives their mission, literally and figuratively. This is very much the case for Learn Work Develop (LWD) in Rwanda, our newest recipient partner. LWD's main focus is to guide and support teen girls who are not fully supported by their families. The bike com...

Bikes for the World has added a new partner! Learn Work Develop is an NGO in Rwanda and our second supported project in this country. But Learn Work Develop itself is not NEW, even the bike project has been around for a few years. But after a pandemic sized year of delays, we are now donating bikes to this life changing organization. In fact o...

Ted Haynie has been around Bikes for the World since the beginning and he's done a little bit of everything from collecting bikes to driving trucks and even guiding the organization. After serving on our board, Ted's been MIA with BfW for the last couple years, only poking his head into the warehouse to deliver a stray bike or sewing...

They say that hindsight is 2020. But a cyclist knows in order to keep your balance you need to keep your eyes on where you are going. And when we took a look back over the past year we realized that practice is exactly what kept us rolling through a challenging year of uncertainty.  It should have been a year of celebration for Bikes...

In reality volunteer Jeff Colaianni has only been with Bikes for the World for a little over a year. No, really, we've checked multiple times. It only feels like much longer because it was a covid year. And everything seems much longer during a pandemic. It goes without saying, Jeff's contribution to Bikes for the World couldn't have been...

We're back. Or rather YOU are! This month we welcomed our first (very small) service group back to the warehouse since the pandemic started. Despite the protocols and regulations required by staff and board members, these pioneers from McLean School put their heads down and their wrenches up to help us get bikes ready for our ne...

David Hickson is another one of those Bikes for the World supporters who goes way back. Like double digits. David manages the collection at his school, Sandy Spring Friends School (SSFS). Over the years the school has contributed many bikes to the program and offered service hours to students. They are not an annual collection site, instead sk...

This container of bikes from October 2020 arrived in Madagascar in February slightly behind schedule. The donated bikes, in part from a collection at McLean School, were shipped last fall in hopes of arriving before the Christmas holiday. They arrived for Valentine's Day instead. The demand for bikes has only grown over the two month...

When the global pandemic stopped human life in its tracks last year, wildlife kept moving on. And this group of conservation rangers in Rwanda quickly adapted to meet life where it led them and hurdle roadblocks left in the way. They had several critical tools at their disposal: first, they were established with a solid community model wh...

Charley Young is a high school senior at St. Andrews in Potomac. Let that sink in a second. Class of 2021. Homecoming, prom, college visits, robotic competitions, athletic scholarships, your own parking space at school. Going out for burgers, hanging with friends at the mall, watching the newest blockbuster in a theater, your first t...

Frank Smith is one of our faithful, weekly volunteers who helped keep us rolling through the pandemic. Frank came to us shortly after we moved into our Rockville warehouse and he's been spending nearly every week with us since! He is part of the crew who strips usable parts from our scrap bike pile which just seems to keep growing. Not to make it a...

This past year's health and economic crisis continues to unfold even as 2020 draws to a close. The recently signed COVID-19 relief package offers assistance to many Americans who were blindsided by closures and reduced capacities that greatly impacted their ability to provide basic needs to their families. When the pandemic began last spring, ...

Bikes for the World works with hundreds of volunteers annually, many of them offsite that we never get to meet or thank. Richard Silva is one of them. Richard is a vehicle maintenance coordinator with Fairfax County. He's also a welder. And an artist. The bike sculpture he's leaning against in the picture above is one of his works of art (our ...

This week Bikes for the World donated our 160,000th bike. Looking back at our last leg of the journey, we couldn't have done it without the commitment from our long term recycling partners. Because our source of donated bikes is so diverse we were able to keep our program rolling along at a steady pace...just not at the volume we've ...

Mr. Densroy Reid (left), D. Reid, or just simply Reid has been hard at work for Bikes for the World for years now, although he may not look very familiar to anyone hanging around our warehouse. Don't let all the bikes behind him fool you, this isn't actually OUR warehouse. Mr. Reid works at Preferred Business in Elmsford NY and these are just ...

Dhruv Sundararaman (right) is one of three scouts this fall who helped launch our collection season under unusual circumstances and protocols. Arnav, on the left, was another working on his Eagle project and also from Troop 1983. Both scouts contacted us last year to set up bike collections as their Eagle projects and both were scheduled this sprin...

When COVID-19 quarantines shut down businesses and crowded public spaces, rural communities around the world where food security already teeters on the edge were forced beyond the brink. Empty markets and closed ports shut down access to food in an instant. In Africa subsistence farming provides food for many families, but there is n...

Healthcare workers in Sierra Leone use bicycles to treat and prevent malaria

As the world rushes to develop a vaccine for COVID-19, we are looking forward to saving lives and resetting life to normal. Meanwhile, many African nations are also glancing back at past successes and challenges when faced with other diseases and outbreaks, hoping to learn and respond better and faster to this pandemic.  So far in terms o...

Meet The Crawfords: Tom, Carrie, Scott, and Paul, or Paul, Carrie, Tom and Scott if you are following along in the photo. The Crawfords have been fixtures at the Otterbein United Methodist Church collection in Hagerstown since 2005. We've actually watched the boys grow and mature into quite the bike mechanics. Their willingness to le...

Students around the world have been heading back to school over the past few weeks unsure what their school year will actually look like. Back in March, when Covid-19 spread across the globe at an alarming rate, classrooms closed and kids found themselves parked in front of laptops and tablets on couches and kitchen tables trying to stay on to...

The global pandemic is bringing to light long-term deficiencies in smaller countries struggling to control coronavirus. Energy resources, for example, are essential to help countries like Sierra Leone respond and recover from Covid-19. Despite bringing mini power grids to health facilities several years ago, many are still operating ...

Bob Knoll is one of the most sought after and valued Bikes for the World volunteer varieties. Don't get us wrong, ALL of our volunteers are super important and highly regarded in our warehouse, but Bob has a truck and trailer and he knows how to use it to move bikes!  Bob actually came to know us through a bike collection held at Temple S...

Who's that masked fella? Oh, just your run of the mill Bikes for the World Superhero- Ron LaCoss. We are super excited to announce we welcomed back select volunteers this week, starting with our elite mechanics who work the day shift (we actually did a trial run with our Thursday night regulars last month). Ron jumped at the opportunity to get back...

Ron Boyd is a Thursday night regular. Sometimes it's just him alone in there prepping bikes for the next big shipment, but we've come to rely on him quite a bit to keep that room under control. Knocking those bikes back every week not only helps us fill our containers for our partners around the world but it also helps Jonathan and Glenn have ...

When COVID-19 brought a medical crisis to the Philippines, like most countries, they answered with quarantines. Shutting down businesses and public transportation left essential workers literally stranded. Front liners and health professionals were still expected to report to work but many didn't have the means to do so without a lengthy, time...

Edward and Lovina work at Philippine General Hospital and while many people were hailing them as heroes labeling them essential, they were struggling just to get to work. Essential workers covers a lot of ground. They are doctors, nurses, security guards, cooks, grocers, food delivery drivers and janitors. Many live miles from w...

Essential workers in DC got a lift from Bikes for the World last month through a local initiative to bring safe alternative modes of transit to the city amid the coronavirus pandemic. The group BikeMatch DC is pairing up donated bikes with essential workers who are facing limited public transportation options or may not feel comfortable r...

Today amid health concerns, we are all binding together and finding ourselves in one big sewing circle. Typically a sewing circle includes a group of people working together to create either individual pieces or one big project. Now, many of us are pulling out old sewing machines, dusting off cutting wheels and mats, and trying to remembe...

So this is Amy and Phil Loar...two long time supporters of Bikes for the World. We've already highlighted Phil before and we truly can't say enough about this guy, but this time our focus is on his wife Amy who is an avid quilter. And as you might guess, has her own sewing (or quilting) circles. She helped us close the circle on a local mask m...

We hope this note finds you staying safe and healthy during these trying times. As we all deal with the Covid-19 pandemic, we wanted to let you know how Bikes for the World is adapting and responding. To ensure the wellbeing of our staff, volunteers, and members of the public, we suspended collection and shipping operations in mid-March. As ever, w...

These seamstresses in Lawra joined together last month to help slow the spread of coronavirus in their remote village in northwestern Ghana. Mercy and her team are supported by the non profit group Action Through Enterprise (ATE) which helps small business owners thrive in small rural communities hit hardest by poverty and hunger. ATE worked w...

For our newest partner, Rwanda Wildlife Conservation Association (RWCA), educating the community about conservation goes hand in hand with protecting wildlife. Two of their main areas of focus are the endangered grey crowned crane and bat research and conservation. When news of a spreading coronavirus hit Rwanda in late February, RWCA immediat...

Costa Rica is accustomed to weathering many storms, but the coronavirus pandemic may be the toughest. April is a time when beaches would normally be packed with tourists. Markets would be bustling and stocked with fresh fruit picked daily. Coffee houses serving up local brews. Today, the beaches are empty, businesses are closed; the touri...

Taking a look across our partners around the world who are all going through the coronavirus pandemic along with us, we expected to find hardship and heartache. The communities we serve are already at risk. Students struggle to stay in school, farmers rely on subsistence agriculture to feed their families, access to healthcare and hospitals co...

Heidi, Abby, and Walt. This month we are giving a shout out to The Green Team. This family of bike mechanics is far from green, unless you count those old Raleighs (center photo) they built up for the DC Tweed ride. This crew certainly knows their way around bikes and our bike stands and we love seeing them in any combination during our r...

Rabbecca is passionate about sensitizing her community to health issues, and dedicated to saving lives. Behind this commitment is a deep understanding of the pain of losing a child. Years ago, Rabbecca and her husband were forced to walk more than twenty miles over dirt tracks to the nearest health facility, after their own...

Farming is a big part of life in northern Madagascar. There are several 'cash crops' present in the DIANA region. Some of those crops include cocoa and Artemisia which is used in anti-malarial drugs and gaining new interest. But most farmers produce rice, and while yields have been increasing, many of those farmers continue to struggle to feed thei...

In Madagascar women outnumber men in number but not opportunity. And gender equality is essential for economies and communities to thrive. In rural Madagascar, which includes a majority of the population, many families live in poor under-served communities. Too many young girls start out at a disadvantage when they are forced to drop out of school ...

Judy Mitchell has been working with Bikes for the World longer than any of the current employees, and more recently she has really upped her game. She is now counted among our elite team of retirees who can frequently be found tinkering around the warehouse on any given day. Judy started volunteering with us alongside her husband, Jim Mit...

Bikes for the World's involvement in Madagascar began in 2015 when we first supplied a shipment of bikes to the newly established e-box mandroso in Miandrivazo. Specifically the MAHEFA program, a USAID funded community health program administered locally by a network of Malagasy and international organizations, set out with the objective of providi...

Daniel Mitra was one of our bike beneficiaries at the Regional Lead School for the Arts in Angono, Philippines. While he was still in high school, he requested a bike with a carrier so he could carry sheet music for his free lessons with kids. Daniel is still in school, he's still playing music, and he's still riding bike! This is him last yea...

Once upon a time we were like the little engine organization that could- chugging along with a passionate conductor named Keith who convinced everyone in his wake to jump on board. Bikes for the World Founder Keith Oberg kept us on the rails and brought on volunteers with a shared vision who not only helped us pick up steam...

A fish might not need a bicycle, but this bird sure does! What in the world is a bird going to do with a bike? Thrive to survive. Bikes for the World is excited to announce that we have just partnered with Rwanda Wildlife Conservation Association (RWCA) and already have a container of bikes on the way to them. Just how the bikes will be u...

Looking Back First and foremost, THANK YOU. 2019 was an incredible year at Bikes for the World and no one knows this more than our tiny staff...we could have never accomplished everything we did without you. If you like numbers and want a visual track of our progress we've created a fun infographic that walks you through our year. If you prefe...

Walter Mulbry has never owned a new bicycle, or so the tale is told. We've seen him tinker with Treks, Schwinns, and the latest e-bike to roll across our threshold, and we believe him. He may have never owned a new bike, but he's had his share of bikes in the family. Around our warehouse he's absolutely electric! No joke, he drives an ele...

​Welcome to the family! These kids may soon be riding your old bikes. A container of bikes is now on the way to Zwel Kids Club by way of the Rotary Club of Empangeni, our newest partner at Bikes for the World. In fact that shipment should arrive in South Africa before the end of the year. Zwel Kids Club is a community Based Organization (CBO) that ...

Getting the most out of Rotary International! Earlier this year our partner Rotary Club of Carroll Creek (RCCC) toppled all records by surpassing the 5,000 bikes donated mark at their annual spring collection. This effort has helped us deliver bikes for over 15 years to 78 recipient partners around the world (38 based in the US). RCC...

Dennis Kiernan is the owner and manager of Preferred Business in Elmsford New York. He is also operating the official/unofficial NY arm of Bikes for the World. There's really no other way to describe it. We can, however, also give due credit to his entire team working at Preferred Business for lending a hand in the effort.  Dennis approached B...

Empowering women is the name of the game and Village Bicycle Project is winning. Rebecca Conteh is the second of two female mechanics in Sierra Leone to to start her own bike shop. This is truly a major breakthrough in a country that still operates under some significant taboos against women even riding bikes. Rebecca is only 20 years old and she i...

​The Bicycle Library provides bikes to hundreds of girls in Sierra Leone through our partner Village Bicycle Project (VBP). But how does that work exactly? Simply: exactly how you think. Girls who attend a school that has a Bicycle Library can 'check out' a bike much like a library loans out a book. This is just one of the tools of t...

​It's almost unfair of us to call out Jeff Bruland as our featured volunteer of the month because as you can see in the photo, he is more than just a man. That's Jeff there in the almost middle standing with his wife Tina surrounded by the United Methodist Men from Montgomery UM Church in Damascus.  This is Jeff's second crew to visi...

Check out Adama's pink Magna above. This is the bike she rides to and from school every day. Now that she has a bike, Adama is becoming a better student. She absolutely loves school, especially English. Since she started riding to school she has cut her six mile commute time in half. She is now always on time and never misses a day of class. Adama ...

What do you do when World Teacher Day falls on a Saturday? You form a bike ride to visit all your teachers to say thanks! That's what the bike beneficiaries at SPANHS did this past weekend for their monthly community ride in the Philippines. The kids got together on a Saturday and planned a ride to drop in on all their teachers at home to deli...

School is bike in session. No, that isn't a typo. When these young students from Concepcion Integrated School (CIS) in the Philippines went back to school, the first order of business was getting set up on their bikes. CIS is in their fourth year of  working with Bikes for the Philippines (BfP) and they just introduced thei...

Lexlyn is a student at Siocon National High School in Mindanao's Compostela Valley in the Philippines. She is also one of our bike beneficiaries AND an accomplished mechanic. Lexlyn earned the nickname "Girl Power" because of her strength and skill. She is also a great role model and mentor for her fellow bike beneficiaries who just received t...

​Zoltan Nagy has been on a few rides with us over the years, and I guess you could say he's redefining what cyclists call a Century. This year Zoltan spearheaded the effort with the Montgomery/Rocky Hill Rotary out of New Jersey where he relocated several years ago. He actually started collecting bikes with the Germantown/Gaithersburg Jaycees ...

Bill Regan has been a regular Thursday fixture around the warehouse for the past year. He came to us at the end of last year and asked how he could get involved. He knew his way around a tool bench and brought with him mechanical experience. This guy's an all around handy-man working on his own bikes, cars, and doing home projects around the house....

Our partner MiBici operates over 200 microfinance credit co-ops in all seven regions of Costa Rica, however, the co-op in Batán is special because it is one of two in the country that is run, staffed and primarily serves women. In the Matina area of the Limón Province, where Batán is situated, the co-op serves an important purpose as a community ce...

Girls have come a long way, but they still have miles to go- and hopefully with a bike they will get there faster! This month we are taking a look at education in rural El Salvador. Last time we told you of challenges boys face within their families when it comes to education. But what about girls? First, schools are tackling stereotypes when ...

​For these students in rural El Salvador family is everything. Many dream of growing up and finding good jobs to help support their families. And a bicycle could be the difference between a successful engineering career or being stuck in subsistence farming. For families struggling to survive, sending a child to school is often a dif...

 The one constant among the folks we met in Costa Rica was that income diversification was the rule rather than the exception. In the small community of Bambu we met Brauli who primarily supports his family by working as a firefighter in Bri Bri. Beyond that, however, Brauli supplements this work in a number of ways--several of which were pred...

​Adela Wynn (tucked in the back in blue) is one of the those volunteers who has been around with us since the beginning although less active recently than in the past. But we wanted to take this opportunity to remind you once you are a member of the Bikes for the World family, you are ALWAYS a member of the Bikes for the World family.  Ad...

Back in 2011 the Washington Post followed a shipment of donated bikes from Bikes for the World to their destination in Costa Rica. Specifically those bikes ended up in Sepecue and were transported there via small boats on the Rio Telire. While this was not a community that was visited on this trip, there was a more direct connection to the bikes an...

One of the constants in rural Talamanca is the importance of bananas or plantains to nearly every family and individual that we met. Unlike the bananas that you find in your local supermarkets which are generally grown on large plantations owned by multinationals like Dole or Del Monte, the majority of the bananas in Talamanca are grown on small 1-...

Granjero, vendedor, mecánico de bicicletas, esposo, padre, bombero: Brauli. This is Brauli, his wife Stephanie, and their son Matteo. They live in a small community known as Bambu which is tucked in a corner of the Telire River in Southeast Costa Rica. While their home is surrounded by the Telire on three sides (they can see Panama from t...

When a donated bike ends up in Costa Rica with our partner MiBici it will almost always end up in a relatively rural area where getting around by bike is the most logical and cost-effective transportation option. During my time in Costa Rica I visited several small communities in Talamanca, close to the Panamanian border and well beyond the end of ...

Valerie Van Hollen is the creative muscle behind the pen motivating Cumberland area donors to let go of their old bikes. Here she is accepting our coveted 1k award given to groups who have collected over 1,000 bikes for our organization (this was a few years ago). Don't count now, but her crew is set to break 2,000 by next year!  Her...

 Everyone knows about bananas and how commonplace they are all over Costa Rica, but what about banana bikes? What is known as a beach cruiser to most of us has simply been dubbed the banana bike in Costa Rica and is the most sought after type of bike in many parts of the country. These bikes are known as bananas because the frames often look l...

Participating in a 5k, whether you walk or run, is how many people support charities and causes all over the world.  On average, it takes about 35 minutes or an hour to complete. Imagine if it took 14 years!  That's exactly how long it took the Rotary Club of Carroll Creek to win the race to 5,000 bikes. See when we say 5k, you think feet...

Some of the most common questions we're asked are "how is Bikes for the World funded" or "it must be really expensive to ship bikes overseas--how do you do that"? It certainly is true that the costs associated with getting donated bikes, parts, accessories and tools to our partners are not insignificant. This is one of the largest expenses tha...

Logan Hay set a Bikes for the World Eagle Project record last month when he collected 255 bikes for our program. He also raised over $1,000. So yeah, he's the featured volunteer of the month. How'd he do it? Well, we are still scratching our heads on that one.  When Logan came to us last winter he had his sights set on completing his...

Isata is going places. Fast. And the bike is taking her there. Isata is one of only a few female bike mechanics in all of Sierra Leone. Isata was introduced to bikes in school when she first started riding as a student, and she never stopped. Back then she was racing the boys just trying to keep up, but now they are chasing...

​In Sierra Leone, especially in rural areas, schools are spread out making the commute for students long and tiresome. For some families this hardship can put graduation out of reach. It is not usual to find a student who walks as much as eight miles one way just to get to school. Most walk at least four. The time needed to walk those mil...

Gordon Johnson coasted into our coveted 1k Club as of last year, but we still haven't gotten around to properly inducting him yet! And depending on whether you use 'new' math or 'old' numbers this honor is well overdue. First, let's look at the 'new math'. Gordon has been a collection manager at Trinity United Methodist Church i...

Photo credit: Toby Madden/Transaid

 Josephine Mupeta is a farmer and Community Health Volunteer (CHV) in the Serenje District in Zambia. She was trained through a Transaid health program to specifically recognize when someone is suffering from malaria. Her motivation is to help save lives in her community. One of the ways Josephine educates her neighbors about the danger signs ...

Health care in rural Africa is compromised by distance and accessibility. Communicating information and delivering basic health related supplies, some as simple as soap, are huge first steps in battling disease and even death in small rural communities.Our partner in Madagascar, Transaid is an international development organization that transforms ...

Robin Erinesy is helping to save lives in his community as part of the Emergency Transport Scheme (ETS) in Madagascar. He operates this bicycle ambulance to help deliver patients to medical professionals.Because the roads are poorly maintained and the terrain is difficult to navigate by motor vehicle, transportation is often expensive if accessible...

This is Nate. A few months ago we received an email from Nate's mom Sarah. This is not out of the ordinary; we are contacted by many moms looking for volunteer hours for sons and daughters. In this case however, the email came from Sarah's account, which Nate was using to contact us directly. Nate took the initiative to reach out to us because he w...

​Some day Janet will have a business of her own. It is a dream she never imagined could come true. Janet lives in a small community in Ghana with limited employment opportunities. Her family was struggling and while she helped out on the family farm, she wasn't earning any money of her own. Then, she met an organization called Action Through Enterp...

It's never too early to learn how to ride a bike...or the importance of donating one. The kids above may not be riding on two wheels yet, but once they do, they will outgrow their bikes before you can spell Motobecane. We think now is the perfect time to tell them about Bikes for the World. And their school agreed. They are the Junior Kinderga...

Harry Betz came to us by way of a collection held north of Philadelphia in Newtown, Pennsylvania. That collection occurred at Pennswood Village and was managed by Harry's long time customer George Kurz. George is also a long time supporter of Bikes for the World and he was in Harry's shop, Newtown Bikes, and mentioned the collection. Harry liked th...

Nirfe Masudo uses her bike to help earn money to feed her family. She was chosen to receive a bike through the Bikes for Education program offered through Bikes for the Philippines. Nirfe's school, Dr. Beato C. Macayra National High School was selected as a beneficiary school after waiting nearly five years for bikes. The bikes were meant...

Reynaldo Naque is another student beneficiary from Dr. Beato Macayra National High School in Davao Oriental, Philippines. He was selected by his teacher Mam Ritchie Adanza to receive a bike from the first batch released in June 2018. ​For Reynaldo a bike meant more than a ride to school, it completely transformed how his classmates saw and tre...

Jeric Margate is a student, bike rider, mechanic, mentor, and leader. And all were made possible through Bikes for the Philippines (BfP) and Jeric's teacher, Ritchie Adanza who named Jeric a bike beneficiary at Dr. Beato Macayra National High School in Baganga, Davao Oriental.  When Mam Ritchie heard about the Pedals and Paddles program sponso...

​As you can see Jeff doesn't just volunteer around bikes, he also rides them! That's sort of how we initially connected. Jeff was just dropping off a bike at a collection event over a decade ago, and here he is still hanging around! Jeff Saxe fell in love with the Bikes for the World mission and he saw a valuable resource in his own back yard going...

First batch of bike recipients in Against All Odds program

Pinelands Creative Workshop (PCW) operates a youth program in Barbados focused on giving members of the community equal opportunities in spite of their families' socioeconomic status. In fact the organization's goal is to improve the lives of struggling students through arts programs, education tutoring, and career training.  But the impact do...

​As it turns out, learning music is a lot like riding a bicycle. It takes concentration, control, patience, and attention to cadence to create that balance or flow. For these young musicians in Barbados the connection to bicycles goes even deeper.  Pinelands Creative Workshop (PCW) is a Bajan community center located in an historically under-s...

Thank you for your support of Bikes for the World in 2018. This past year we were able to accomplish so much through your support. In a year filled with change and transition we were able to hit some big landmarks and accomplish important goals. These included seeing a big uptick in volunteers at our Rockville site, the continued growth and strengt...

Sister ACTS is a group of devoted women out of Martinsburg West Virginia who deserve our highest praise. One of the group's leaders, Sue Ann Palmer, contacted Bikes for the World a little over a year ago to invite us to speak to the group. Outreach Coordinator Yvette Hess made the trip up to Otterbein United Methodist Church in Martinsburg, where t...

Jesus Mena Martinez is a cattle farmer from Isla Chira. He watched many neighbors and even members of his own family move away in search of a better life filled with unlimited opportunities. While resources may be scarce, life on Chira Island is rich in culture and the landscape breathtaking. It is a hard life to leave behind, but many feel fo...

​Meet Woody Woodrich, tired and true volunteer throughout the years. Woody became invaluable to us once we moved into our warehouses in Pentagon City. Woody helped us out by grabbing items left at bike shops over on the Hill which saved us the hassle of driving into the city. More importantly he kept us awash in tubes and tires. Back then we were a...

Feeding programs, similar to this one in Sierra Leone, are provided through schools to ensure that students receive at least one meal a day especially in the hardest hit months of July and August. Food insecurity affects much of the country, but is felt deepest among the most vulnerable, Sierra Leone's youth. While Sierra Leone is home to some of t...

​Food security continues to cripple rural areas of Sierra Leone, often for months at a time. Nearly 3/4 of the land is suitable for agriculture, however, the country still fails to provide enough food for its population. During the rainy season in August many children go to school hungry as their parents struggle to feed their large families. ...

​For many young girls in Burkina Faso becoming a woman comes far too early. Change is coming but for many girls it hasn't been soon enough. Several years ago, laws were enacted to make it illegal to force girls to marry before the age of 18. Before then, girls had little say over their futures. Girls younger than 16 were sometimes taken from their ...

Trinidad Montoya took a job of necessity and turned it into a successful, thriving business. Several years ago, Trinidad was faced with high medical bills when her young daughter needed special treatments in the city. In order to pay for the care her disabled daughter needed, Trinidad started sewing clothing and making small repairs for friends in ...

Our own Keith Oberg was recognized last month by Bethesda Magazine and Bethesda Green for his tire-FULL work creating, growing, and maintaining Bikes for the World for over a decade. We of course knew Keith created something special so it's very satisfying to see someone else noticing too. On October 17, Keith accepted the Individual Leadership Awa...

Noah and Sam first came to our warehouse last winter to get a few community service hours with their families. They are now our youngest regular volunteers. They've work their hours in among basketball games, summer camps, and homework...these guys are always moving! They didn't just happen upon Bikes for the World nor were they planning to check o...

We are Cycloville. These three women were in the first round of training when the organization formed in 2015. Sharon, Elma, and Jackie (seen here with Julius and Winstone) trained under Julius to learn the ins and outs of bicycle mechanics. They are now fully trained bike mechanics who can not only do their own repairs, but train others to do the ...